Coping with Corona

The virus racing through America’s cities, particularly in New York and Jersey, is metastasizing at an alarming pace. Five hundred cases in New York City one day turned into 1,000 the next, 2,400 the next and 8,000 by the weekend. As we go to print, sixty people are in intensive care units and lists are being passed around with dozens of names who need a speedy recovery.

“Yidden,” tweeted Rabbi Chanina Sperlin, the executive director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, “our shtetl is burning.”

So, How Are People Coping?

“No one coped,” one friend who has eleven children tells me. “It’s an outright lie to say they have.”

Yochonon Kugelman, a computer programmer from Brooklyn, disagreed. He said he wants a few more days of staying home. “So many things got done, things I’ve pushed off,” he said. “My wife participated in a lot of teleconferences. So neither of us were bored.”